indubhushan_dasfandomcom_ru-20200215-history
!!! Musical notations for Indian classical music
thumb|right|335 px When you chant on your beads, that is another thing—when chanting on the beads so many things can come to your mind, but when you are singing so many things will not come to your mind at that time. — Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj, "Wholesome Transformation" http://www.scsmathinternational.com/guidance/kirtan/DailyKirtans.php#saranagati https://github.com/lpapp/indian-music-notation http://kksongs.org/songs/k/krsnakrsnakrsnakrsna.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ShPuNjr8xA Krishna Keshav Pahi Mam, Rama Raghava Raksha Mam indian-music-notation Musical notations for Indian classical music It is currently following the tunes at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8RFGshlNBLbD4ofo_b9prA All credit goes to "krishnabhakta" for making these wonderful videos. How to use the notes: An octave of a harmonium contains W1 B1 W2 B2 W3 W4 B3 W5 B4 W6 B5 W7 keys, which is the sequence of white and black keys. In these notations, Sa is placed on the first white key of an octave. This is because Prabhuji normally makes the videos with the hqrmonium scaled to "C#". This can be strange at first as non-scalable harmoniums are normally set to "C", and the common placement of Sa is the first black key (B1), normally. When multiple notes are pressed at the same, "slash" ("/") separates the simultaneous notes from each other, e.g. S/P means Sa and Pa pressed at the same time There are three saptaks: Mandra, Madhya and Taar. The notes use "'" single quote either before or after the actual note indicating its placement, i.e. whether it is Mandra, Madhya or Taar. E.g. 'S would mean Sa in Mandra saptak, S would mean Sa in Madhya sapta, and S' would mean Sa in Taar saptak. The notes for a line are normally placed above the line that contains the lyrics for the line. The notes are normally put above vowels, however there can be exceptions to this, e.g. the common one "s(h)" in Krishna's name. There can be more than note played for a vowel. However, vowels are not multiplied in the current notes when a vowel is pronounced a couple of times. It is up to the reader's understanding about the tune. This may be improved later. There can be multiple variations for a part of a tune. These variations are indicated with v2, v3, etc. Variations normally slightly differ, but the base is mostly the same. Variations can mean more embellishment, simplification by leaving a few keys out, changing a couple of keys, or even the same sequence, but with slightly different distribution over the vowels. The tune normally builds up the pace, goes to double time and then at the end, it comes back to "Part 1", the slow part. Then, it finishes with a closing chord (normally two notes). There can be transient chords (i.e. keys) between subsequent parts. If the next part does not start where the previous ends, there is normally a way to smootly change from the previous to the next. This is indicated with "=>" after each part. E.g. "=> P/S'" would mean that the previous part ends with Pa, and the next part starts with Taar saptak Sa, so a smooth transition between the two parts would mean pressing down both Madhya saptak Pa and Taar saptak Sa. At some point in the history of this repository, I started becoming more verbose with the notes for the tunes. This ended up generating more notes because I started noting down the transition between two notes, e.g. from Sa to Re. It was indicated as "S R" before, but it is now indicated as "S S/R R", where "S/R" is the transition between the two notes. It gives a bit more harmony and smoothness to the tune, but this is not essential to play. The change can be more exclusive. This can be easily left out at most of the transition, especially for a beginner, for whom, this may be too confusing and verbose. There is currently no plan to put all these notes into proper rhythm indication as it is already time-consuming to keep writing notes for Prabhuji's videos. But if someone is happy to volunteer with adding rhythm notation to the notes, that would be most welcome. It would surely bring these notes to the next level. Note are sometimes in brackets. This is to indicate that they can be played or left out optionally as the harmonium player desires. There are connected notes, like S/R. This means that both keys are played simultaneously. This usually happens when transitioning from one note to another. When learning the basic melody initially, these can be left out. The melodies may seem a bit overwhelming with these. But these may provide some taste for advanced players. Doing smooth transitions between notes by holding both down temporary can increase the taste of the kirtan and bring more energy overall to the chanting. It is often used when a note is pressed for longer than the rest in the melody. It is good to have some chord effect then. But it is just variety that you do not need to put into your kirtan.